


Titanic

by Spockykins



Series: We Opened The Vault And All We Got Was This Dumb T-Shirt [3]
Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: "what if Rhys could play movies on his arm", Crack, Crack and Angst, Handsome Jack AI - Freeform, Tales From the Borderlands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 11:25:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18939970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spockykins/pseuds/Spockykins
Summary: Rhys fell asleep and woke up to... crying?





	Titanic

Sniffling. Someone was crying. 

This wasn’t the first time that Rhys had woken up in the middle of the night to hear someone sniffling. This journey had been hard on all of them, and a late night sob was nothing if not normal. 

This was different though. There was talking. Multiple voices. Yelling? That was something to be concerned about. 

Rhys hated waking up almost as much as he hated confrontation, in relation to both people and feelings. After a few seconds of hyping himself up, Rhys opened his eyes. 

He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it definitely wasn’t everyone crowding around Rhys and crying. Everyone. Sasha, Fiona, Vaughn… even Jack was there. Every single one of them had some look of despair on their face. 

“Kid! What’d you do with the movie?” Jack threw his hands up dramatically in the air, yanking on his hair to hide the fact that there was the electronic equivalent of tears on his face.

“With the what?”

Fiona and Sasha stared at him, clearly thinking that he was going insane. Instead of the truth, which was that an artificially-intelligent dictator-ghost-thing was inside his head and blaming him turning off a movie. He guessed he might very well be going insane. He should probably tell someone about that. 

“We were just… uh.” Fiona tried to lie, but she was pretty garbage at it. 

Sasha smiled smoothly at him. “We were watching a movie on your arm.” 

Rhys was momentarily taken by her smile. That is, until he realized what she said. “What?” 

“Your arm started to play a movie, so we gathered around to watch it. It stopped when you woke up.” Vaughn explained, almost cautiously.

Sasha tapped him on the arm and gave him that smile again. “Can you play it again?” 

Well, since she asked so nicely. Rhys looked at his arm and thought for a second. He pulled up his ECHO net menu and looked around. “I wasn’t sure that I could do that, honestly. I don’t know how to pull it back up.” 

He closed the menu to see three completely devastated expressions and one obnoxiously smug one. He squinted at Jack. “What?” 

“I have to do everything around here, don’t I princess? Tell them you figured it out. Daddy’s got this.” Jack raised his own arm, which let him control Rhys’s arm. 

This had been happening more and more frequently since Rhys had chosen to trust Jack over Fiona. He’d gotten a taste of having a body again, so Rhys supposed it was probably tempting to chase the high. As long as Jack didn’t go around stabbing people, he didn’t see a reason to try to stop him from doing so every once in a while.  
Rhys never claimed to be a wise man. In fact, his friends usually claimed that he was, maybe, the least wise person alive. 

“Hold on, don’t give me that look. I have an idea.” Rhys opened the ECHO net menu again. He made a face of concentration, like he was doing the work to pull the movie back up. In truth, Jack began to direct the search down the right path. After a few seconds, the movie was projecting on a small screen held in his hand. 

There was a massive ship and it was sinking. People were rushing to lifeboats. Vaughn, Sasha, and Fiona all scooted close to Rhys so that they could get a better look. It was uncomfortable. 

Rhys paused the clip, which earned him a glare from Fiona. 

“Come on! This is an exciting part.” 

“Could you chill for like, a sec?” Rhys waited for her to go away.

“Fine. Only because I really want to know what happens.” Fiona crossed her arms and leaned back.

After a few seconds of fiddling, Rhys finally found what he was looking for. He scooted so that his back was leaning against the base of the couch. Jack floated to sit behind him. If his legs were real, they’d be framing his shoulders uncomfortably right now. Thankfully, they weren’t real, but that didn’t help stop the uncomfortable feeling from settling in the base of Rhys’s gut. 

“Everyone get comfortable,” Rhys instructed, holding his hand out in front of him. 

Vaughn flanked his left and Sasha, his right. The couch sofa thing wasn’t really that long, so they were squished together. Rhys didn’t move to the couch because he didn’t want to sit on top of the AI Jack. He certainly wasn’t going to ask him to move. 

Jack snorted behind him and rested his chin on top of Rhys’s head. “You sure you don’t wanna hop up here, Rhysie? Plenty of room.” 

Rhys ignored him, opening the menu once more. This time, he protected the film onto the wall. He pressed play, and everyone was immediately enraptured again. Rhys didn’t know what was going on in the first place, so it was almost impossible to be invested in the film at this point. Especially since whatever tragedy was happening in this movie had already started.

He was doing his best to just focus on the people around him, take social cues and such to try to get more involved in the film. It wouldn’t work. He was too hyper-fixated on Jack behind him. Even Jack was invested, and he seemed to be the textbook of a sociopath. Yeah, Rhys used to idolize the guy. Past tense.

The credits started to roll and that was what finally pulled Rhys out of his stupor. He looked to Vaughn, who was timidly trying to hold back tears. He was failing. Fiona on the other hand, seemed to be holding back the tears with physical force. She seemed uncomfortable. 

Rhys sighed and slapped his knees awkwardly. The credits disappeared from where they were projected on the wall, causing everyone to look to him. “Well. Let’s go to bed?” 

The three of them nodded, but no one moved. Rhys couldn’t handle the proximity to Jack any longer, so he was the first to stand. Sasha seemed disappointed by his abruptness. Which made Rhys feel guilty. His attraction to Sasha wasn’t really a secret. When Rhys thought someone was attractive or cool, everyone and their mother knew. Sasha had told the gang about how Rhys acted around Zer0, and they still haven’t shut up about it. 

“You guys want to keep driving?” 

Fiona nodded. “Yeah. You guys can sleep, I’m not too tired.”

“I’m probably going to stay awake a little bit longer,” Sasha said cautiously to Rhys. “If you wanted to stay up.” 

Rhys shook his head. “I’m pretty tired.” 

“It’s not that late, dude. You alright?” Vaughn seemed worried, which was his most insufferable state. 

He nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine. Gonna… go sleep. Mind if I take the bed?” 

No one objected. Well, no one said anything, but Rhys took that as confirmation.

He left the room without another word. Jack hovered after him, like he always did. He thinks he heard Vaughn ask Sasha if Rhys was alright, but he couldn’t be sure. 

Rhys sat on the edge of the bed. He rubbed his face and looked to Jack. “What happened?” 

Jack was laying on the bed behind him already, somehow. “We were bored, kitten. What’d you want me to do? Sit there and listen to Muscles and Pretty Face out there ramble about math or whatever those nerds were talking about?”

Rhys leaned back and stared at Jack. 

“What?” 

“Pretty face? That’s the best you could come up with?” 

“Listen, I’m tired and so are you. Go to sleep.” Jack ordered. 

There wasn't much point in arguing. What Jack wanted, Jack got, both in life and in death. Rhys laid down beside where Jack was laying. He curled up and shut his eyes. After a few moments, the looming presence over his shoulder disappeared. Only then could he fall back asleep.


End file.
